HILLSBOROUGH
This “virtual” house in Hillsborough, CA, is designed for a real family on a real piece of land for a real budget. The house should become real itself sometime in 2008, but its long birthing process from a mere gleam in its owners’ eyes to a fundamental part of their lives and portfolio, tells a story of the power of residential architecture – the perfect cocktail of self indulgent physical comfort, sensible long term investment, and immortality - to drive otherwise reasonable people to overcome unreasonable physical, emotional, financial and bureaucratic obstacles to build.
Architecture’s seductive power is so pervasive it is banal, as more than one million new homes are built each year in the US and countless more are renovated or redecorated.
Architecture’s seductive power is so pervasive it is banal, as more than one million new homes are built each year in the US and countless more are renovated or redecorated.
Whether large, small or in motion from one to the other, every architectural voyage begins with an itch and piece of a dream. The persistent client will not stop at the builder’s pre-built home or the realtor’s fixer-upper, but will land at the door step or the inbox of an architect. The architect’s ultimate mission is to translate the client's dreams into functioning and elegant shape. “Functioning and elegant” are very broadly defined, however, to include obvious items like the arrangement of rooms and “prettiness,” to more elusive concepts such as functioning within the local legal framework through codes and regulations, and elegantly engaging physical properties like gravity (really important for architecture!), sun angles, and views.
DNM ARCHITECT - 161 Natoma St. - San Francisco, CA - 94105
REV: 11/22/08
© 2008 David Marlatt